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Workhome PDF
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Expcrimcnt
t
+ [
t
+ y
+ e
,t
(1)
where Treat
i
is a dummy variable that equals 1 if an individual belongs to the treatment group
defined by having an even-numbered birthday; Experiment
t
is a dummy variable that equals 1 for
the experimental period December 6
th
to August 15
th
; and Employee Performance
i,t
is one of the key
measures of work performance. This includes the log of weekly phone calls answered, log of phone
calls answered per minute on the phone, log of weekly sum of minutes on the phone, and an overall
performance z-score measure (performance score normalized to mean=0 and standard-deviation=1
based on pre-experiment performance for each task). Finally, [
t
reflects a full set of weekly time
dummies to account for seasonal variation in travel demand, such as the World Expo in 2010 and
the Chinese New Year, and y
)
Control (+)
Pre-Experiment During-Experiment
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Note: Histograms of the performance z-score for the treatment and control groups after 3 months into experiment
(SD=1 across individuals in the pre-experimental data)
Figure 4. Cross-sectional performance spread during the experiment
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3
Figure 5. Selection further increased the performance impact of home
working during the company roll-out
Note: Data from January 4
th
2010 until October 1
st
2012. Phone calls in z-scores (normalized so the pre-experiment values are mean zero and standard
deviation 1) shown as the difference between home and office workers. The drop in performance before the start of the experiment is due to the disruption
from the transition from office based to home based working for the treatment group. The dip at the end is similarly the disruption for home based employees
that are moving back to the office (who until they are fully office based are coded as home workers).
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During the
experiment
Company
roll-out
Before the
experiment
Note: Cumulative attrition rate equals number of employees attrited by week x of the experiment divided by total number of employees at the beginning of the
experiment, calculated separately by treatment and control group. Dashed lines represent 95% point-wise confidence intervals calculated by bootstrap.
Experiment started on week1 and ended on week 38.
Figure 6. Attrition is more than halved by working from home
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0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38
Treatment ()
Control ()
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4
Figure 7. The top and bottom half of employees by pre-experiment
performance both improved from working at home
Note: Data from January 4
th
2010 until August 15
th
2011. Phone calls in z-scores (normalized so the pre-experiment values are mean zero and standard
deviation 1). Calculated separately for the difference between the top half of the treatment and control groups and the bottom-half of the treatment and
control groups, where performance halves are based on pre-experiment performance.
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Before the experiment During the experiment
Bottom half ()
Top half (+)
Appendix Figure A1. The Lee (2008) bounds for estimating the impact of
non-random attrition
Note: Data from January 4
th
2010 until August 15
th
2011. Performance in z-scores (normalized so the pre-experiment values are mean zero and standard
deviation 1; performance measures used depend on the type of employees). Upper bound is calculated assuming the worst performers of the treatment
group would quit to create a equal attrition rate between treatment and control each week. Lower bound is calculated assuming the best performers for the
treatment group would quit to create an equal attrition rate between treatment and control. Approach follows Lee (2008).
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Before the experiment During the experiment
Upper bound ()
Lower bound(+)
Actual difference T-C ()
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5
Headquarters in Shanghai Main Lobby
Call Center Floor Team Leader Monitoring Performance
Exhibit A: Ctrip is a large and modern Chinese firm
Treatment groups were determined by a lottery Working at home
Exhibit B: The randomization, and examples of home-workers
Working at home Working at home